End of the road for family business after 58 years

Transport Reporter

Last stop … Giuseppe Oliveri, the chief executive of Metro-Link, which lost out when the government put Sydney bus services out to tender for the first time. Photo: Sahlan Hayes

JAMES PACKER might not have to sweat on a tender process to win a Sydney casino licence.

But the family of Giuseppe Oliveri - immigrants from Calabria, market gardeners and Sydney transport entrepreneurs - did, and this week they lost out.

Arriving in Sydney in the wave of postwar migration from southern Europe, Mr Oliveri and his sons, Giovanni, Francesco and Rocco, found work growing tomatoes and in odd jobs at service stations and in factories.

Pooling money, the family bought a bus route in 1954 - Route 41 - to transport workers from the market gardening area of Green Valley to Liverpool.

But this week, the Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, appeared to signal the end for family-owned transport businesses such as Metro-Link.

After the first competitive tendering of bus services in Sydney's history, the Oliveris lost their government contract.

The contract will be taken over in April by Transit Systems Australia, which runs ferries in Brisbane and Gladstone and buses in Perth and Adelaide.

For Ms Berejiklian, the results of the tenders for the first four of Sydney's 15 bus contract regions prove the benefits of taking them to the market. Another four regions will go to tender next year and the government is threatening to do the same for the state-owned State Transit.

"Simply renegotiating with the existing operators - as had been done in the past - would likely have resulted in contract cost increases,'' Ms Berejiklian said.

The government will save about $18 million a year on the new deals signed this week.

But Giuseppe Oliveri, the grandson of the patriarch who started the business and chief executive of Metro-Link, was scathing of the process that will cruel his 58-year business.

''This is a major event in the history of our family … 58 years and this is the way the government shows you the door, it is not respectful,'' Mr Oliveri said.

Of the company's 36 buses, Mr Oliveri said he was obliged to sell half of them to the new operator.

He is not sure what will happen to the other half, or the debt needed to buy them. Nor does he know what will happen to Metro-Link's depot, on which he has spent $12 million.

John Lee, a former director-general of Transport and the chief executive of the Tourism and Transport Forum, said the Oliveris' story was an unfortunate byproduct of much-needed consolidation. ''These are regional monopolies. Under competition policy it just makes sense that you would put these sorts of contracts to a market on a periodic basis,'' he said.

''The Oliveris have performed a good service to the community, especially to the settlement of western Sydney. But in a modern city like Sydney … you need to have organised regional monopolies so you can run a network of services rather than a patchwork of services.''

Reg Kermode's ComfortDelGro Cabcharge also lost its Westbus contract, but retains its lucrative Hillsbus contract, which will be tendered next year.